Very harsh but worth your time

Rating: Null/10 (7 June 2004)

I disagree with the prior review. I thought this film did quite a lot with its limited budget; it did what you should do when you can't blow bucks on special effects - focus on story and character. The people in the film are folks you root for; they grow, they fight, they survive. Well, some of them do.
Important notice - this is no zombie movie. There are no zombies. There are victims infected with a "rage" virus. It's a decent premise, with a very difficult opening as we see chimps tortured and turned into monsters in the name of science. (It's too bad that animal rights activists are made the catalyst for the virus's escape into the world, but who said horror is politically correct?) The film grows out of the John Wyndham school of disaster story, and does well by the tradition. Like "Triffids," the hero comes to in a hospital after everyone in London has vanished. Gradually we learn what happened, without a lot of dull exposition. Well done. After that the attacks of the "infecteds" are filmed in a very interesting sped-up, grainy style that is truly nerve-wracking. It may seem a bit overdone, but the style is used again at the end, when the hero, uninfected, has to use his rage to save himself and his friends; this leads to some very interesting questions, and it was a good piece of film-making.
There are some major plot holes, there's a bit of casual racism (which is noticeable and therefore quite powerful), a touch of sexism in the denouement (but the characters have shown themselves more than self-sufficient beforehand), and there are moments that are difficult to sit through because they're so grim. But the film deserves its good reputation and is well worth seeing.